LGBT Community Center Seeking Feedback for New Location

The Facility Search Committee of the LGBT Community Center is seeking feedback in its efforts to find a new home for the organization. A survey can be found online.

The move comes in tandem with the center's 40th anniversary here in Cleveland, and a number of neighborhoods across the city are being considered for the new spot. The organization, one of the longest-running such centers in the country, has been in Gordon Square for 15 years.

"I always start any conversation with 'If you're a Clevelander, please be proud that the city of Cleveland has an LGBT community center,'" Executive Director Phyllis Harris says. "We love it here [in Gordon Square], but we are ready for the next step in our life as a community center."

Funding for the purchase of the new location is coming from an anonymous donor and the Milton and Tamar Maltz Family Foundation, the latter of which has committed up to $500,000 in a matching endowment for the transaction.

One point brought up in the survey is the organization's partnership with A Place for Us, a new affordable apartment complex for LGBT seniors. The LGBT Community Center will be provided programming at the 54-unit apartment complex, located between West 116th and 117th streets on Madison Avenue.

The survey floats a specific option for the center's new location: "There may be an opportunity for the Center to purchase additional space next to the new housing which could be used as the new permanent home of the Center...[And] if the Center does not consider this option for its new permanent home it will not negatively affect the programming that will be provided to the residents."